Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category

The 8th wonder of the world – The hanging parliaments of Westminster

Could a political party, or more specifically, one man and his charismatic words3, hand the Lib Dems, a party that has never been in power before, the keys to Number 10? It could be so and it could be thanks to Twitter and Facebook. Nick Clegg has also thrived due to his ability to win over crowds in the first ever live televised debates in UK election history.

As can be seen from the graph above, Mr Clegg is leading the way in online buzz on Twitter with regards to the TV debates and with two very noticeable peaks around the time of the debates themselves. With the last one having taken place last night, it will be very interesting to see how this will play out.

If nothing else, Mr Clegg is causing an unsettling stir (at least for David Cameron and Gordon Brown) since he may actually cause a hung Parliament. This does, unfortunately, not involve the hanging of MP’s (in my opinion the only way to truly change politics in the UK) but would mean Gordon Brown staying in office a little longer because no party has won a clear majority. History shows that a hung Parliament can cause uncertainty in the upper echelons of Government which then trickles down to the masses and can lead to ‘unsettling’ times.

Also, what can be observed from the pie charts below is that Mr Clegg is clearly the winner when it comes to the buzz around TV debates across social media sites Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to the increase in Twitter and Facebook chatter, Mr Clegg also has the TV debates working in his favour since it has launched an almost unknown political figure into the stratosphere of political life. As can be seen from the Attentio BrandMaps picture, he is being talked about much more with regards to TV debates and hung Parliaments than the unimportant things like the economy, and spending cuts.

Oddly enough, very few people are talking about tax which probably serves all three leaders politically since it is widely speculated that a tax increase is on the way whoever is in charge.

In the next blog post, I will be talking about the parties in relation to social media and whether or not they are using it to their advantage.

New features: Attentio ‘Brand Maps’

This week we’re announcing version 3.0 of the dashboard and every day we’ll post here a little more detail about what the new features do.

The feature we’re most excited about is the new Attentio ‘Brand Maps’ which we believe has the potential to disrupt the Market Research industry. How so? Well first let’s start with:

What is it?

Read the rest of this entry »

Social Media vs. Mainstream “opinion”

What can social media show about politics?

It can show that the professional press does not reflect public opinion.

Attentio is measuring and monitoring the buzz around the European Union and its pet policies and problems. Analysis of the project demonstrates the distance the EU has gone to earn popular legitimacy–as well as the distance the EU has yet to go.

Mainstream news is an accurate source of what the EU is up to. The EU elite carefully publicise their efforts through the professional mainstream media. Last week, EU elites at the Commission and the Parliament met to address the issue of illegal immigration and the need for more border security for the Union. As a result of these efforts of the European elite, the mainstream buzz is all about security and border restrictions. (Note the top red trendline highlighting this prominent issue in the chart below.)

Buzz words picked up by the Attentio algorithms (that’s tech speak for the magic that is the Attentio software) include “detain” and “deportation”. Maybe the EU thinks that if it draws a darker circle around all the Member States, the Union will feel a bit more unified, or maybe the elites are genuinely worried about the estimated 8 million illegal immigrants living inside the special European border-free area, the Schengen.

Either way, the political elite are not effectively engaging the public in their concerns. The buzz in the social media, the blogs and the forums created by the unpaid, unprofessional European citizens, is not concerned with non-European immigration to the EU. For the “average European”, the top concern associated with the EU is democracy.

Europeans in the social media are concerned not with the external EU immigrants so much as internal EU integration. Neither the EU nor the mainstream media is reflecting an accurate version of the “average EU citizen’s” opinions. Europe’s population is concerned that the EU institutions are losing touch with the people that they are supposed to represent. This is the difference between mainstream and social media, and this is the distance that the EU elite have to address.

If they are aware of it. Don’t we wish all politicians would pay as much attention to the media that the people produce as the publications produced by the pros?

Addendum from Attentio’s political analyst:

Further Attentio analyst analysis of the data comes up with this short summary: Europe is pretty regional, and the wider the EU grows, the more these regions mix and bump up against each other. The issue for the EU population is not so much European border controls as the lack of internal border patrols. Immigration, for the EU citizen, is a local problem, and it’s the Europeans from other Member States as much as the immigrants from outside the EU that frustrate localised populations. Prior to addressing the regional frustration that is immigration, it might be better for the EU to integrate vertically, then horizontally.

Buzztrend

Anders has set up buzztrend.eu that looks at mainly political buzz arising from blogs and forums. Its a nice site especially as he is using our data. Some good stuff there on the US elections and how EU commissioners compare. He’ll also be following the US elections through 2008 and next Spanish vote.